r/moviecritic • u/Spirited_Alfalfa_343 • 13h ago

Why do you think Navarette has gotten so much awards buzz for Obsession but Ejiofor has gotten none for Backrooms?

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I know Clark has some limited screen time but Ejiofor absolutely steals every scene he’s in. His two separate monologues with Reinsve are just as good as anything Navarette did in Obsession. As I said earlier, is it the lack of screen time for Ejiofor?

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u/Over-Think-It 13h ago

I’ll say it. I didn’t really “get” Backrooms

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u/quigongingerbreadman 13h ago

It was more lovecraftian than anything. A realm/dimensional horror film where the horror is coming from some outside, unexplainable or incomprehensible threats.

It is like the narrative difference between the video game Alan Wake 2 and Resident Evil 2. The fact that the threat is beyond comprehension and is ultimately unknowable is part of the creepiness.

Where obsession follow more of like a Djinn monster, which grants wishes in nefarious ways.

So I appreciate them both, personally, but obsession is a bit easier to wrap one's head around than backrooms is since it deals with things we're used to deciphering, the whole movie could be summed up as "be careful what you wish for". Backrooms is more about the consequences of messing with unknowable dangers beyond human comprehension.

That's my take anyways. And my way of saying "ya, I could see what you're saying"

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u/broncyobo 12h ago

Backrooms is more about the consequences of messing with unknowable dangers beyond human comprehension.

I agree that describes the horror element, but regarding the point the movie makes (in the sense that Obsession's point is "be careful what you wish for") I'd say it's along the lines of "some people would rather live in an endless cycle of repeating the same toxic behaviors, content in the isolation this leads to, than positively change who they are"

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u/pornoforpriapus 8h ago

The other element is that going through the door itself is something different. Frank was willing to take the leap into the unknown going into the backrooms for the first time, and repeatedly even when it scared him the first time. So it’s like, is he only interested in things he know will eventually destroy him or what?

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u/Admirable-Language65 8h ago

You obviously never have tried cocaine 

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u/pornoforpriapus 8h ago

I have and I didn’t really get it. MDMA is far superior in every way

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u/Admirable-Language65 8h ago

Just because you don’t get something doesn’t mean something else is superior at least not the way you worded it. For you it is, bit that’s not something you can say is a fact like that it’s an opinion.

Anyway I was mainly just being sarcastic. But plenty of people try a drug knowing what it has done to other people because of curiosity or any other reason, and then they keep going back to it despite even realizing what’s happening over time.

Maybe people that love doing LSD and tripping is a better example they open the door and are terrified but keep doing it regardless and sometimes bigger doses, or switching to something stronger that eventually is too powerful to handle and destroys them.

Never seen the movie but the comment I was replying to about why someone would have that behavior is human 

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u/pornoforpriapus 7h ago

Def not gonna read all that but whatever your point is, you’re right my friend

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u/ObjectiveCover3850 9h ago

Just want to point out, it's been did several times but the 1 Wish Willow does not grant wishes in nefarious ways, Bear got what he wished for. So did Ian. So did the cashier.

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u/quigongingerbreadman 8h ago

Nefarious meaning extremely literal and the interpretation of that wish is generally in a negative light unless the wisher is exceedingly pedantic.

What part of loving someone makes you dig up their dead cat and feed it to them?

I love my wife to pieces, I would never dig up and serve her her recently deceased pet... the wish obviously went wrong or was interpreted by a being like a Djinn who grants wishes, but twists it to be a dark wish.

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u/Temnyj_Korol 5h ago edited 1h ago

Counterpoint. The OWW wasn't nefarious. The wish itself was.

Bear MADE an exceedingly pedantic wish. And he got an exceedingly pedantic result. He could have just wished "i wish nikky loved me back" or "loved me like i love her". But he didn't. He wished "loved me more than anyone else in the fucking world."

So it did exactly what he wished for. Made her love him more than anyone else has ever loved anyone before. Including all the insane, crazy, obsessive people out there.

The other wishes we hear about turned out fine. They got exactly what they wanted, presumably without any further consequences. (Barring Ian being killed immediately afterwards, though that was his own poor choices that caused that, not the wish he made.) It was just bears dumb choice of wording that caused the rest of the movie to happen. It literally is a direct example of "careful what you wish for."

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u/mothbreather 2h ago

I think that the core corruption of the wish was not in the wording but in in his heart. So the interpretation wasn't of the word "love" but what Bear thought of as love. He didn't really love Nikki. It's shown several times that he didn't even really know her. It's all a fantasy created by and centered around him. After all, that's what he talks about during his practice confession, how she did things for him.

And the cat... well, he acts like he loved the cat but threw in the garbage like yesterday's dinner. Ironic, that.

(Of course, a few times when real Nikki comes out she lashes out or tries to attack Bear so it's possible that the cat was real Nikki's doing rather than the wish version.)

I think it all makes more sense if you see the Willow as a neutral entity interpreting the wish through the eyes of the person making the wish. So wish-Nikki is a reflection of Bear's obsession. She's more Bear than Nikki.

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u/Nisnis95 1h ago

That first sentence 👌🏽

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u/MeowthThatsRite 6h ago

Nothing about what Nikki did expressed “love” in any form though. He wished for love and got completely selfish violent obsession, how is that getting what he wished for?

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u/Big-Beta20 6h ago

He didn’t wish for just love. He wished for her to “love him more than anyone else in the fucking world”. There are definitely some insane people who have extremely unhealthy ideas and expressions of love and Freaky Nikki had to one up them. If he just did “I wish for Nikki freeman to like me back”, hell it might have worked out but that’s not a fun movie.

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u/playboyjboy 5h ago

At first I thought his specific wording just fucked him over. If he just simply wished that she loved him back, it might’ve been a more “standard” level of love and admiration.
However, the notion that she was possessed and would snap back to reality momentarily and ask to be put out of her misery throws off that explanation. Even if her love was less psychotic and possessive, would she still be imprisoned in her own body by a different entity who was there to love bear?

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u/Big-Beta20 5h ago edited 5h ago

Maybe if it were a more standard level of love, her snapping in and out of reality wouldn’t have been as drastic for her nor would she have to deal with the consequences of the horrible or weird things “she” did. The best example I can give is you would notice if you got shot in the hand but maybe not if you got a slight papercut. In a standard level of love, she could just kinda snap like “why do I like this person again?” then just going back to being in a “normal” relationship without necessarily realizing it’s fake. Standard Love can sometimes be illogical like that and she might not think anything of it. I think the extreme obsession she felt exasperated the dual personalities I guess since one was a monster.

It’s a fun discussion but at the end of the day, this is all semantics or head canon or whatever you wanna call it because it’s just impossible to know all the implications of wishing behavior. If the possession was more similar to the sunken place in Get Out, then yeah it would still have be a very drastic an noticeable change for her.

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u/mitteinai 3h ago

Let's break it down to the obvious rules of the movie then. If you wish someone to be different according to your desire, then a new version of that individual replaces the original within the body. If you wish for a million bucks, you get a million bucks no questions asked. Simple as that.

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u/likekoolaid 2h ago

more so than that nikki’s actual personality/soul was trapped in some tortured hell while the “person” that loved him more than anything in the world was some kind of cat eating demon

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u/ZizzyBeluga 9h ago

If Nikki really loved him more than anyone else in the world, she would be noticing how absolutely miserable he is by her actions and not do those actions.

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u/DrDabsMD 8h ago

Not necessarily, you're thinking about it as if the love was non-toxic, but everyone who watched the movie knows that wish overrode Nikki's autonomy to want to be with Bear no matter what.

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u/ZizzyBeluga 8h ago

Yes but Nikki wasn't stupid. Love doesn't mean you stand still and pee yourself and tape up the door and murder someone, making it highly likely you'll never see that person again.

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u/PenOld5534 8h ago

Yea but I think it’s safe to say that she wasn’t even Nikki anymore. The wish created a whole new entity

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u/DrDabsMD 8h ago

Nikki wasn't, but she wasn't herself right? She had lost all of her autonomy. She couldn't make decisions for herself anymore which is the part I don't think you're understanding. You're point is from someone who can still make decisions for themselves, Nikki couldn't. All she could want is to love and be with Bear, and Wish Nikki will fulfill that no matter what. It's the thought process a lot of mentally ill people have, the person they "love" will be with them and only them no matter what, and that's what Bear turned Nikki into, and that's why the horror worked.

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u/ZizzyBeluga 8h ago

I do understand that, I'm saying the wish wasn't literal or benign, it was set up to destroy him

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u/DrDabsMD 8h ago

It was literal though, he wished for her to love him more than anyone in the world. Meaning anyone else that shows any ounce of affection to him is a threat to the wish, meaning Nikki can be the only one that must be there for him, meaning any other form of attachment Bear can make with another person, even a friendly one, will be a threat to Wish Nikki. From what I'm understanding it seems you equate love as always being a good thing which is a very sweet thought but very Disney-esque. Loving someone can be a very beautiful thing but if you let that love consume you, let be an obsession, then that person will do horrible things in the name of love.

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u/ZizzyBeluga 7h ago

Right except he didn't wish for her to be obsessed with him more than anyone in the world and it wasn't even really Nikki, it was a demon, so the idea the wish was just literal is clearly not true

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u/Puzzleheaded-Wait785 6h ago

No he didn't. He never wished for a demon to possess her body.

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u/Nisnis95 59m ago

Why do you think it was a demon? What if it was actually a projection of Bear? The way he loves himself is actually projected on Nikki? When he wished that Nikki would love him more than anything in the world, this might suggest oneself. Another clue to suggest this that after the wish how Nikki said my cat died, confusing you and I. Also demon can be a right because Bear is Demonish, ruled by his fears and insecurity, harming his cat, himself and people around him

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u/mauvus 10h ago

In regards to the first paragraph, I actually think that's why Backrooms fell a little flat for me. I felt like the film offered too many explanations and concrete looks at the horror within the backrooms. It lost that mysterious quality that really makes it creepy.

Unrelated to the main topic at hand, but still worth noting

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u/Wyjen 6h ago

W Alan Wake reference

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u/Material-Grocery5478 12h ago

but back rooms was really really stupid. The electrician sees something hes never seen before in a breaker box and basically ignores it? Why does the backroom need to pull power from an outside source? Why isnt it just over ran with monsters? So smart to outline the door but no lead ropes or tape to show the way back? Dude just went back in the first after knowing hes not alone. And kinda stupid to find a bag full of information on your 1st trip in and just ignore it and never speak of it again?

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u/quigongingerbreadman 12h ago

What was he supposed to do? The switches weren't hooked up to anything, so there was no danger. It was a just odd to see then installed like that, but there was no perceivable danger so he went on his merry way.

I agree with the bag of stuff... like you find a whole bag of stuff from another intrepid explorer and you don't immediately go back and comb through it all for clues?

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u/Material-Grocery5478 12h ago

I would think he would have removed or at minimum looked behind it for an old connection. Not just flip it once or twice.

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u/quigongingerbreadman 12h ago

I think it is implied he double checked and they weren't connected to anything. They didn't outright show you on screen because movies tend to skip mundane details like "electrician spends an hour tracing circuits and finds the switches are not connected to anything" because that would be boring AF to watch. So they have an electrician simply tell the main actor they aren't hooked up.

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u/Material-Grocery5478 12h ago

na its not one of those imo. its lazy writing try to smarter than it is imo.

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u/Nervous-Night6698 11h ago

You had me at lazy writing try to smarter. I am intrigued. Any other thoughts banging around in there?

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u/Material-Grocery5478 10h ago

ya a therapist wouldn't show up without authorities. It all lazy in the fact zero people would just wonder around. Its just sloppy to say well golly gee these people just wondering around

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u/Nervous-Night6698 9h ago

You would be the authority on lazy slop.

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u/[deleted] 13h ago

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u/[deleted] 12h ago edited 10h ago

[deleted]

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u/Stunning_Positive248 12h ago

Backrooms had a 30,000 sf physical set

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u/Shoopdascoopitypoop 12h ago

Brother CGI is NOT AI. There are actual graphical artists designing those set pieces in programs. They are NOT putting words into a text box and seeing what appears. Backrooms has story I suggest you try to engage some critical thinking skills instead of feeling like something that requires interpretation as just slop

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u/SuperbPruney 12h ago

Are we now saying CGI and AI are the same thing?

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u/Bulba_Core 12h ago

Lmao why did they downvote you? Words have meanings.

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u/QSlade 12h ago

…they literally use physical effects for the main monster. Hell, all the “monsters”. Did we even watch the same movie?

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u/beachbum818 11h ago

Which movie was cgi? And what part?

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u/Xznotel 11h ago

Trying doing as your user name suggests

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u/AWarTimeConsigliere 10h ago

I found it shallow and pedantic

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u/SeraphBlack19 8h ago

It insists upon itself

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u/ricang727 7h ago

I agree as well. Shallow and pedantic

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u/Fattyb421410 5h ago

It insists upon itself

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u/garysnailz 6h ago

It insisted upon itself

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u/Odd_Salamander_3492 7h ago

Wasn’t Obsession infinitely more shallow?

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u/AWarTimeConsigliere 7h ago

The “shallow and pedantic” line is from Family Guy when Peter thinks he’s smarter than everyone and just starts saying it about everything.

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u/Odd_Salamander_3492 7h ago

I understand the reference. I understood it as you believing it truly applied to this film

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u/stormblaz 7h ago

Great first half, questionable and rushed 2nd half, the monster spoiler lost all appeal when it walked at cripple speed and had no threat, before it was a demigorgon on the loose then a cripple, i lost interest because a simple kick would limp him, I wish it stayed a powerful threat and the writing stayed tight 2nd half.

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u/Unlucky-Duck 12h ago

I'll go as far as saying I wasn't blown away by neither of them. Didn't hate but didn't love it. 

Although with Inde even to me it looked that she put out very much more of a show. She nailed her part.

Sidenote: And these modern day horrors like dear God I want a girlfriend, or with Substance body dysmorphia lol

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u/shiloh_jdb 6h ago

I just watched it. Didn’t get how this and Obsession were 1A and 1B for horror this year. Obsession was a hit because it connected to an interesting discourse around relationships, “love”, personal courage etc. Backrooms was much more niche. I had no knowledge of the internet lore preceding it and it seemed to lean into it very heavily.

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u/mitteinai 3h ago

You watched a movie sequel to a YouTube series but didn't watch said series? Makes sense.

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u/likekoolaid 2h ago

this is the first i’m hearing of this

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u/l33tfuzzbox 3h ago

Im sad iron lung has been dropped from thr conversation. Production process alone is amazing, and the fact its genuinely good is even more so

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u/CathanCrowell 1h ago

Not really. I actually tried a little experiment. I know a lot about the Backrooms and the basics of YouTube Shorts, and I really enjoyed the movie. I read some reviews, and some people expressed the opinion that you have to know about the phenomenon to appreciate it, so I decided to watch the movie with my mom, who knows literally nothing about it, and she loved it.

She enjoyed it differently than I did, but she really liked it as psychological horror, and it made her feel uncomfortable. The vibe of dreamcore and liminal spaces is universal.

The movie itself is perfectly fine. I believe it's the phenomena themselves that aren't for everybody.

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u/Equivalent_Hope_9886 11h ago

Its a really slow boring movie, nothing to get.

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u/astralrig96 11h ago

it sadly suffers from the typical mistake of many modern movies, especially new generation horror, that they end up undermining their own plot and culmination of narrative development, by replacing a coherent story with symbolism and allegorical abstraction

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u/MajorMajorMajor_Tom 9h ago

I do think some movies do that but I don’t think backrooms does. If you didn’t like it, that’s fine, but that’s a limitation from you.

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u/astralrig96 9h ago

it’s not a limitation, the plot literally dissolves and is sacrificed in the final act at the altar of deep symbolism, I’m not even the first one to make this criticism

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u/25sittinon25cents 8h ago

The ending of Obsession was clear and satisfying. Backrooms was good until the end, which was the opposite of clear and satisfying

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u/hill-o 7h ago

It's because the movie skips an entire act, and then tries to just kind of... explain what happened, and what would have been likely the most interesting part of the plot.

If you want something similar (but better written), I recommend the book Piranesi.

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u/TonyStarks81 10h ago

Don’t worry, the creator didn’t get it either. I have no problem with letting viewers interpret your art as an artist. I absolutely hate when the artists refuses to give their interpretation of anything because they want the viewers to make of it whatever they want. I honestly think backrooms is just some random shit filmed hoping that people who like it will create some really deep lore out of it that the creator never could on his own. If they make more movies and flesh it out then I will retract my statement and rewatch the first film differently. Until then, there is nothing deep or interesting about backrooms, it is just a 2 hour YouTube video that could have been made by some random teenagers for a high school art project.

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u/Failber 9h ago

I kind of felt the same way about Curry Barker. Maybe he gave his solid take on Obsession somewhere, but he gave a lot of “it wasn’t that” answers without a follow up explaining what was going on. Some of the stuff he said didn’t make a ton of sense either.

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u/SubstantialPanic4253 10h ago

Yeah I saw both in the cinema. Obsession was just a better horror film, backrooms had its moments but was nowhere near obsessions level.

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u/OutrageousProgram732 10h ago

backrooms was so boring

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u/emulator01 13h ago

I’m right there with you movie made no sense

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u/senator_corleone3 13h ago

Sure it did.

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u/Biff_666 12h ago

Did you even watch kanes YouTube episodes?

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u/maywellbe 9h ago

Is that a requirement?

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u/ltsouthernbelle 13h ago

The ending really didn’t do it for me at all.

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u/BoogleBud 10h ago

Were you a fan of his YouTube series?(Kane Parsons)

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u/mediacontender 10h ago

The horror that comes with trying to control your life in a universe so large and vast and beyond our full understanding. Clark's story is a pretty simple but effective story of a man spiraling madness, the folly of projecting importance and meaning onto a random and apathetic world. In the process ruining the lives of everyone he pulled into his orbit/the backroom's orbit.

Its also sort of a deconstruction of like romanticizing trauma, people want to give meaning and depth to our lives, to understand ourselves, but if we aren't careful we end up just stuck in a loop of decaying memories, like a piece of furniture in our own memories. Clark is literally devoured by a memory, in a scene that parallels the painting of saturn (time) eating his son.

Mary/The Therapist's ending is like the punchline to a big cosmic joke. A therapist unable to move past her trauma, who is a therapist because of her trauma, replaying memories of her clients trying to help them understand themselves and move on. By the end she sees believes she has found meaning and understanding of herself through the backrooms and Clark, like its one of her own therapeutic exercises. She has a symbolic loaded battle, overcoming her issues and letting go of her past in the process, she should leave this place better for it, finally free. But instead ends up trapped in the backrooms with a new group of confused, fearful people seeking control, stuck in a loop.

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u/Ok-Air3126 9h ago

The movie was made for the fans of the YouTube series by Parsons. They're a good second monitor watch. Give em a go.

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u/OlDirtyMustache 9h ago

I got it, and that's what killed it for me lol. I was familiar with the concept since I watched the videos on youtube, and the mystery was like 80% of the charm. The long format really didn't help it I feel like, since they had to give some lore and explanations around it, that threw away the mystery.

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u/Ok_Day6378 8h ago

There's a bit of lore behind it, without watching the YouTube series or reading about it beforehand it leaves you with a lot of questions

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u/IllPomegranate1924 7h ago

You need to warch the lore on YouTube and make huge leaps in logic for the movie to make sense. On its own it's an unfinished project.

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u/TigerLeone 6h ago

It's a movie about a smelly Bizzaro World alternate reality that is prowled by a ten foot tall ill-tempered Captain Morgan psycho killer and a swarm of deformed cotton candy people.

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u/ThisSubIsFried 6h ago

Unfortunately that's kind of the point and the main draw of it.

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u/Much_Concentrate7780 5h ago

I feel like the mistake is trying to "get" it rather than just experience it

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u/Thelostsoulinkorea 4h ago

Nothing to get. It wasn’t really that good, and it would have benefited from not showing the creatures

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u/Ok_Process_2465 4h ago

Bro, when he started pulling mashed potatoes out of the dudes stomach I was like "oooo ok, this movie is fuckin coocoo bananas"

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u/Free-Pound-6139 3h ago

Have you ever been in a room??? Well it is like that, but back!

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u/Novel-Initiative-900 13h ago

Yeah I think calling it good is a smidge higher praise than it deserves but it's certainly not bad. It's a weird little concept and it's explored in an interesting way but it could have been better.

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u/SuperbPruney 12h ago

It’s the lost opportunity to be that much better which frustrated me slightly. I think it is def better than good and if you take into account the budget and limited scope and experience, it’s more impressive (but not necessarily better as a movie).

It teased a lot of things that would have been so great to dive deeper on so I was glad I saw it once but I have not been tempted to watch it again.

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u/CatsPlusTats 12h ago

It was dumb fun, I don't know how much there is to get.

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u/Double_Suggestion385 9h ago

There's nothing to get, it's deliberately confusing and ambiguous.

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u/GrimmBrowncoat 12h ago

I was falling asleep while watching it if I’m honest.

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u/Gypsy_MF 5h ago

You kids have no genuine flavor for what good is, so of course you wouldn’t get it. Backrooms isn’t even like a smart pretentious film, it’s like a perfect modern horror film. SO good I wish I could see it all over again with fresh eyes. Obsession is an okay film, but it’s perfect for the phone scrollers not really paying attention to the movie.